Game Development Giant

The trip back to the United States was uneventful and everything went smoothly, because Jester couldn't forget the meal on ANA's last flight and was extremely dissatisfied with the food provided by United Airlines, so he chose ANA this time.

After landing in Los Angeles, because they had just returned from Japan, almost everyone was in low spirits and had to suffer from jet lag again, so Jester simply gave them a holiday. The official research and development work of "Fire Emblem" was also scheduled to It started on the second day after returning to the United States. Although Jester returned from the United States and was exhausted, as the chief producer of this game, he had no time to spare. Before officially starting research and development, he He also needs to once again review some of the basic settings of the game he had prepared previously.

Because of the jet lag, it was impossible not to sleep, but Jester just slept for a few hours before getting up from the bed and driving to his company in the night.

It was rare that Mark Saini did not rest in the company. Jester had called before coming, but no one answered. However, when Jester just came back from Japan, he heard people in the company talking about it, and it seemed that it was Mark Saini. He recently met a girlfriend and is currently in love. Jester is a little regretful about this. After all, Mark Saini cannot stay in the company and work overtime every day if he has a girlfriend. He pulled out a thick stack of information from his drawer, which Jester had written before going to Japan. But after coming back from Japan, especially with Matsuno Yasumi and Kojima Hideo, masters of future plot settings. After many conversations, Jester felt that he no longer needed to worry about the game plot text. He only needed to provide a general outline of the story and then fill in the specific content and leave it to these people, and he The main thing to do is to establish the framework of the game.

For example, first of all, we need to let the people involved in R\u0026D tomorrow understand what kind of game this is.

rpg games. These people are all fans of this type of game. They even spent their childhood playing dnd tabletop role-playing war games. They know much more about RPG games than he does, but this time what he wants to make is not "Witch". "Art", not "Genesis", not an RPG with a strong DND style and no other content except dungeons, fighting monsters, and obtaining treasures.

What he wants to do is srpg.

This was a brand new concept before. No one has ever proposed such a game - the key question now is not how to make such a game, but first let the developers understand how it is different from traditional RPGs and what kind of game it is. Only by understanding can you create. This is an eternal truth.

This game type was pioneered by Jester, so he naturally bears the responsibility of explaining this type. He cannot let a group of people participate in the development of such a game without understanding what SRPG is.

Otherwise, if you cannot understand the essence of this type of game, it will be impossible to create a true SRPG. Of course, Jester does not expect that these people who are participating in the development of this type of game for the first time can be perfect. After all, this is simply impossible, even for the three giants of Japanese RPGs in history-Zelda. Compared with their mature backseats, dq and ff's first works have great flaws.

But Jester thought about it, and he didn't know how to describe the SRPG that he understood. In other words, how to describe it in language that people of this era can understand and understand.

Jester just looked at the blank white paper he had laid out on the table. The pen in his hand was hanging in the air. Half an hour later, he was still in the same posture, with not a single letter written on the manuscript paper. After thinking about it, Jester felt that it would be better to explain it in simple terms. If I made it complicated at the beginning, but it would affect the mentality and speed of research and development. The best way is to incorporate the characteristics of this type of game into the thinking of my staff as research and development progresses.

Although srpg is a category of rpg, it is not a simple rpg element. In this type, the most attractive thing is precisely the slg element that accompanies the rpg element, and slg is the abbreviation of another type of game. To put it simply It's a strategy simulation game.

In the eyes of many players, srpg games are rarely confused with RPGs because the differences between the two are so obvious. However, some players often confuse srpg games with slg games. For example, when "Fire Emblem" came out After causing a huge response, many games of the same type followed suit and were released. Some of them are SRPGs that are the same as "Fire Emblem", but there are also many SLGs that look the same but are completely different.

To be more precise, later generations should refer to it as Honka SLG, because the classification of SLG is very broad, and Honka SLG is a term used by Japanese manufacturers, which further narrows the scope of SLG, such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Nobunaga's Ambition". 》.

What is the biggest difference between srpg and slg? If you break it down, this is a very big topic, there are many places for discussion, and there are many things in common between these two types of games, but in essence, Jester based his experience on playing these two types of games on Experience, to summarize from the simplest point, is that in this type of game, those with clear protagonists are SRPGs, while those that cannot prioritize the roles are SLGs.

Of course, this branch is relatively general, but it is easy to understand. As for RPGs, although SRPGs focus on the elements of S, they pay more attention to the immersive experience brought by RPGs.

If you use this theory, it will be easy to identify the authenticity of some games that are of this type, such as "Dream Simulation Battle", another example of "Robot Battle", and another example of "Royal Knights", Another example is "Disgaea" and so on.

There are srpg and slg, both of which are often confused.

That's it. Jester's writing was very simple, almost accomplished overnight. Within ten minutes, he put down the pen, picked up the toilet paper on one side and wiped his sweaty palms. The content written on the manuscript paper was not the same. Not much, not even one page was finished, compared to Jester’s previous project of writing a game. It is completely different from writing eloquently on a dozen pieces of paper, not only completing the framework of the entire game, but even sketching out the levels.

Although this time the game development is basically based on Jester's reference to "Fire Emblem", it is completely different from his previous games that were basically copied in full. This time he is just based on his expectations of future generations of srpg genres. Understand the game, design the framework of this type of game, and then leave the other parts to those who are better at detailing the work.

For example, Yasumi Matsuno and Hideo Kojima are good at plots, Hironobu Sakaguchi is good at setting up Japanese RPG combat systems, and Yuji Naka and Gebelli are good at programming. Nobuo Uematsu and Hu Weili are good at scoring music. As for art, Mars Entertainment certainly has top-notch artists. Even Jester once again came up with ideas that he had put aside temporarily because there were so many outstanding painters in his company. , is to imitate Blizzard’s Sons of the Storm and establish an exclusive art team belonging to Mars Entertainment, Sons of Mars.

However, this matter may have to be postponed for a while until the production of my own game is completed.

the next day. Jester called all the members of his "Fire Emblem" design team into the conference room. Jester had already arranged it in advance. The table inside had been moved to one side, and the space in the middle was vacant. There is a row of TV sets. The TVs are all connected to a Dreambox game console, and a brand new game cartridge is inserted into this game console.

Everyone looked at each other, especially the Americans in the team, who looked at Jester with some confusion. Then he looked at the dreamboxes, especially when they saw the unfamiliar black cassette inserted in them, the doubts and confusion on these people's faces became even more intense.

But there were a few from Japan. They were a little surprised when they saw the layout of the conference room, especially the new employees who had never seen the working atmosphere and environment of Mars Entertainment Headquarters. They were even more surprised and couldn't open their mouths. But when they saw the dreambox There was no doubt about the game cartridge inserted on it, because they had played most of the games on this cartridge, and even if they had not played it, they had heard about the reputation of this game.

"Boss, what kind of game is this?" After a few seconds of silence, an American employee finally couldn't bear it anymore and asked.

Jester smiled and did not answer directly. Instead, he waved his hand and asked these people to group up one Japanese and one American, and sit down in front of the TV, because there were many Japanese in the design team this time, and in the end it was just There was one person left who had not yet been successfully matched. Jester originally planned to go with him, but at this moment, Mark Saini opened the door and came in.

Mark Saini heard that Jester's new game was officially launched for development today, and he was still discussing the development plan in the conference room, so he also planned to come and listen. He has been reviewing development plans and development plans for other design teams recently. The report was a bit boring, so I came to relax and get some inspiration from Jester, and Jester knew that Mark Saini could speak Japanese, and he was pretty good at it.

Therefore, it happened that Mark Saini and the remaining American employee sat down in front of an empty game console.

After everyone was in their seats, Jester clapped his hands and began to speak. His voice was not loud, but very clear.

"First of all, the type of game we are going to make is srpg. This is a completely new game type for all of us. I know that you are all loyal fans of dnd games. You know what RPG games are. Even you guys have played Wizardry and Ultima more than me - everyone knows I'm not a fan of those games, so that's not what we're going to make."

While Jester used this opening statement to attract everyone's attention, he also continued his speech which was similar to a speech.

"Today in the conference room, I just want you to experience the difference between srpg and rpg. As the name suggests, you all know that the difference lies in the s, the game inserted in the game console in front of you. Cassette is a very famous computer game in Japan. This time I went to Japan to ask them to make the dreambox version we want as soon as possible. However, due to time constraints, the translation version has not been completed yet, so I just I got the Japanese version of this game before I left. Your task this morning is to play this game with your partner and understand what I mean by s and how to play it. In one game, elements of S-strategy and RPG role-playing are completely integrated.”

At the end of the sentence, Jester clapped his hands again.

"Okay, let's get started and try out this game called "Nobunaga's Ambition"." (.)